What?

About the dead prize

Many design writers wax lyrical about what is and what is not design - it is actually pretty simple, if it is not nature, it has been designed. As a post-industrialized world, design is everywhere.

In the past decade we have seen an explosion of honors and awards for the most innovative and forward thinking solutions. Yet no one recognizes the projects that have caused harm to the environment - designs that are helping shorten our existence on this planet. This is why we created the DEAD prize. Let's recognize the bad, honor the failures and hopefully do something to rectify these designs against humanity.

In August 2014 we will launch a nomination process to celebrate engineering, architecture and designs that have had a negative impact on the planet.

Post Autopsy

We don't believe in being negative, our focus is to discover what the benchmark is to design against or getting a better understanding of how a design failed or was intentionally harmful. It is our hope that like-minded designers see these failures as a challenge to create something new, to correct the mistakes of the past or to find the antidote for the project in question.

Beyond the award is something more important, the solution.

Cheekiness Factor.

This prize is not meant to name and shame (ok, maybe name). Some of it is serious but a lot will be tongue in cheek and is not meant to be disparaging. We are assuming there will be a large usage of puns and poor humo(u)r used on this site.

We will try to reach out to the designer or company and ask for there version of event as to why something didn't work out. - you can even self-nominate if you feel so bold - I know I will - I once tried to design a hybrid bee hive / chicken coop and certainly failed to launch on a number of projects.